When in Rome
by Super Swung Dash
Summary: When you're surrounded by nothing but insanity, staying sane becomes something of a chore... A "Superjail!" AU. Chapter 2 is up, for those who are interested!
1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note~!:** ...well, this is what happens when someone watches a certain cartoon and plans to write a ficlet for about five months. ...Actually, ~~no,~~ this is what happens when they actually sit down and _do_ it.

Enjoy, my fine readers!! 8'D The ending's a bit rushed, but it'll do.

***

Ultima Psychiatric Hospital for the Criminally Insane.

A place where the cuckoos and crooks took their punishments with dreamy-eyed stares, a few bad side effects and assistance from the voices in their heads. A place where straitjackets were thrown around like hot cakes, where Rorschach tests were more like the latest torturous trend than a series of inkblots. A white and wild-eyed place, where bright, whitewashed seas rose up to greet you and swallow you whole the minute you were forced to walk through that entrance. A building absolutely crawling with crazies (though the crazies themselves may have believed Ultima was crawling with something else, some monster). A place where justice was inevitably dealt, in the form of yellow, sometimes blue, sometimes white pills, and maniacal menaces to society dissolved in chemical upon chemical and unnaturally high doses of dopamine and came out as supposedly happy, healthy and wondrous members of society.

Only, some of them never came back. Whispers and wailing, terror and trite tears, every time _she_ walked by.

Oh, yes. The high and mighty head psychiatrist, the published and professional Miss Tess.

At least, that's what she called herself, she with her bright, overly showy glasses and odd suspenders. With her prim, clipped tone and her long eyelashes and her puffed up, puckering lips. She had womanly wiles down to a fine art, it seemed, and she was able to reduce even the most hardened criminal into a pile of goo and tears and confessions. It was what she was known for, what she was _feared_ for--all it took was a wink, a "Hm, yes, this'll have to be just between us, won't it?" and pretty soon even the rapists and the serial killers were blubbering to her about voices in their heads and abusive childhoods.

They were all vulnerable, and she knew it. That's what made her job so simple, so easy. She wasn't dealing with your regular run-of-the-mill psychos, begging for someone, anyone to talk to for a few bucks a week... ...but she wasn't dealing with your typical mass murderers and scheming sociopaths either. These people were attempting to walk the fine line between the two, fragile but deadly, damaged but damaging, tattered but terrifying. They were just her type. And they knew that she didn't care whether you were your average Joe or Jesus--you'd _harmed_ someone. That's why you were here.

She could harm you back.

They all knew that. Maybe you'd be dismissed as just another nut in the nuthouse, at first. Maybe they'd try to up your dose, administer those strange shock treatments, test your blood for any deficiencies or abnormalities, scan your brains and poke and prod until you felt like there was nothing left. Maybe they'd dismiss you, mistaking your very significant observations for the ramblings of a paranoid schizophrenic, and maybe you'd be put in one of those confining and wretched jackets.

But they all knew, because none of them could escape _him._ She'd tried to lock them up in other places, tried to keep him in solitary confinement, tried to schedule therapy sessions so that he wouldn't have an opportunity to get to the newcomers before she could even utter the word "welcome." She'd tried to pump him full of sedatives and feel good talk, tried to fuck with his mind. She would have tried anything, anything at all, if it meant that he wouldn't get to their fragile minds before she could and storm around in their heads like a bull in a china shop. But he was everywhere.

And he told them stories.

It was always fascinating and slightly baffling, the way they'd all congregate around him in their perfect white suits, all huddled up like kindergartners waiting for the teacher to begin, eager and almost innocent. And he would hold himself proud, despite the apparent lack of dignity or personalization in his own white suit, and he would take a deep breath and ask all of them to move, damnit, give him some room to breathe, they were breathing _his_ air, they were daring to breathe _his_ air, were they _morons_ or _what?_ And once that fleeting moment of hysteria was over and done with and he'd gotten their attention, he'd begin his tall tales.

One week, when he was going through withdrawal and mumbling to himself and puking every five minutes, he attempted to tell his followers about his "Superbar." She studied him, watched as he managed to summon up the enthusiasm to tell them all about how he had built his own "party bar," in an attempt to woo Alice the prison guard over, and they'd listened to him just as eagerly as always. Never mind the fact that building his "Superbar" would have taken more than a few days, possibly a few years. Never mind the fact that he was talking to recovering alcoholics and not-so-recovering alcoholics, people who had taken their first sips of beer in their first years of life and had never looked back. Never mind the fact that he was shivering, shaking and occasionally hallucinating.

He managed to tell his story with the same enthusiasm as always, before enthusiasm found itself replaced with dread. And then, that very same Alice, Ms. Liddell, the supposed prison guard now magically turned psychiatric nurse, would pump him full of sedatives to get him to stop screaming about bugs underneath his skin, and he would drift away with a smile on his face, after murmuring something about her lovely hands.

"Freak," was her usual apathetic and gruff response, and then she'd march off to meet a patient who had a date with a case of Valium.

It wasn't just Alice Liddell that got incorporated into his stories, though, and that was the unsettling part. You had the people like Cherice, the shy and slightly spacey receptionist, who was almost insignificant in the strange storyteller's eyes and not very important to his "plot," and then…

…well, you had people like Tess herself. It made her sick to think about all the things a psycho like her patient had done to her, if only in his twisted and gnarled mind, but it was nothing but the truth. He'd taken her and stretched her thin, as he'd done to the others flocking all around her in her hospital, and he'd attempted to ram a square peg like her into round holes by assigning her a role in his bizarre, backwards world… …the world she didn't belong in… …the world she didn't _want _to belong in.

An electric buzzer interrupted her thoughts, and she almost struck out against the infernal thing, with a growl and a scream in her throat. _She hated_ that wretched buzzer, though she was relieved to be brought back down to Earth every time it went off. She took a cautious look around her office, just to make sure she was grounded and secure, and found that everything was just as it had been before she started—she almost wrinkled her nose in disgust at the very notion—_daydreaming._

"Miss? Miss, are you there?"

Oh—just Cherice. She criticized herself for believing that it could have been anyone else, if only for a moment. That simply wasn't logical at all. Daydreams and fanciful thoughts weren't normally a part of her agenda—must've been all that stress. Aggravated snarls turned into exasperated sighs as she rubbed at her temples.

She could feel a headache coming on. "…Yes, Cherice, I'm here," she began, though not without a bit of menace. She might have felt slightly zapped of energy, but she could always afford to make Cherice feel small, if she felt the situation warranted it. The receptionist knew better than to interrupt Miss Tess at a time like this, anyway. "what do you want?"

"Well, I hope I'm not interrupting anything, Miss—"

_Sure you do,_ the psychiatrist found herself thinking, rolling her eyes a bit.

"—but we're having slight difficulties with the patient we admitted this morning."

At this, Tess found herself perking up ever so slightly. "What patient?" she asked, trying to rack her brains for the answer. Ultima admitted hundreds upon hundreds of patients every week, or so it seemed to her, and sometimes even she had difficulty keeping track of them all (much to her chagrin). And then, it came to her in a sudden flash of clarity: tattoos spelling out "PEACE" on his knuckles, an unclean and unshaven look. A quiet, dazed fellow, occasionally attempting to flirt with ladies, speaking in nothing but grunts.

"Oh, right—the criminal known as 'Jackknife,'" she very nearly spat as she put the pieces of the puzzle together, clearly not too keen on the idea of having another madman to manage, and then, dismissively: "well, just ask Nurse Liddell to shove some sedatives down his throat. You should be fine." She waved her hand nonchalantly, as if Cherice could see her. Sure, from what she could tell the newcomer had quite the criminal record and had been in and out of prisons for practically his whole life. Charges for rape and assault, charges for theft and vandalism, something about rabbits, and it was rumored that he was quite the escape artist, but he didn't seem too terribly _dangerous._ From what she could tell, he was either a selective mute or very, very stupid. Possibly both. He couldn't have been a threat.

A moment of silence passed, and then the receptionist spoke again, in quiet and unsteady tones. "But Miss, it's not that," she said quietly, almost hesitantly, as if Miss Tess could box her on the ears right then and there, "it's…" A small, dainty, girlish gulp. "…the Warden, Miss."

_Shit._ She cursed inwardly. Leave it up to storytelling patient to leave her spinning at just the right moment. Leave it up to him to pounce on this fellow madman on his first day, to attempt to tear into his mind like a piece of meat without any regard for her rules and restrictions. Leave it to him to evade all of her safety precautions with ease, to not only refuse to be trapped within picket fences, but to deny that the fences even _existed._

"He's hacked into one of our computers somehow, we don't know how; J's been—I mean, Mister Jared Gilligan has been—I mean—" The incompetent woman with all the maturity of a child on the other end of the line broke off into giggles, as though she wasn't comprehending the gravity of the situation at hand, and for a brief moment Tess wondered why she hadn't fired her yet. She was absolutely _smitten_ with one of the psychologists in the building; it was disgusting and unnecessary.

Miss Tess couldn't understand why people bothered with relationships like that. They just slowed you down, and that was a risk she wasn't willing to take, a risk she couldn't _afford_ to take. Sometimes she felt like the only one with any work ethic in this place.

"Right, fine, Dr. Gilligan's been taking care of him, _fine_." Her voice was crisp and clipped as she drummed her fingers on her desk and tried to contain her rage. She wasn't sure if it was directed at her giggling schoolgirl of a receptionist or her dramatic troublemaker of a patient infecting the rest of her system like a virus, but this was one of those moments where she just didn't care. Anger was bubbling up inside of her and filling her up to the brim. She had to get rid of it, and fast.

If there was one thing she knew about the criminals housed in this madhouse, it was that they fed off of emotions like that. Vulnerability and volatility in any members of the staff couldn't be tolerated for long.

"Where is he _now?_ How did he manage to get to a computer? Which computer was—" she halted even as she found the words tumbling out of her mouth, allowing the remainder of her sentence to fade away. "…it wasn't NOVA, was it?"

NOVA was a clean machine, a work of art in its early stages but a work of art nonetheless. Miss Tess, having a natural inclination in that direction for reasons she couldn't fathom, had been working on it for a while now, and it was all hers. She believed that it would revolutionize the way people looked at and thought of computers, although of course she would never tell anyone this and only fantasized about it in private. It was the best form of technology this day and age could ever hope to witness. She secretly referred to it as a "she" when she was alone, as captains before her had referred to their vessels into the unknown, and had even been known to talk to it once in awhile. Cherice probably knew about this, but she was the exception, not the rule.

No one else knew.

No one else_ could_ know.

NOVA was brilliant, yes, but placing her in the wrong hands could be hazardous to everyone. Not only did she contain information related to the patients themselves, countless records and off-the-records, but she contained information related to the facility itself, information that couldn't be revealed to the public. She knew all of Miss Tess's secrets, and if someone like her patient were to get a hold of technology and information like that…

…She shuddered to think of it, in spite of herself.

"Well?" she snapped, knowing that this was no time for patience.

"Oh!" The receptionist gave out a little squeak of surprise, as if she'd forgotten what her original point was, and then continued on. "No, it wasn't NOVA, Miss, don't worry, no one could have possibly gotten to her." Cherice piped up, quick to reassure her superior in her usual timid tone of voice, and Miss Tess found herself almost scoffing and rolling her eyes. It was just like her to walk on unnecessary eggshells, to refer to NOVA as a female, knowing that the machine meant a lot to her boss and to the stability of the facility itself. It was just like Cherice to be so sensitive and softheaded, to be so _thoughtful._

Had she stopped to think about it, she would have realized that she appreciated it, on some level. Next to NOVA--and NOVA was a machine, she was careful to remind herself--Cherice was probably the person that understood Miss Tess the most in this godforsaken asylum. And you had to have someone like that around, didn't you, to keep yourself sane even surrounded by sheer insanity. Had to pick on someone half your size to raise your confidence. Had to have someone you could rely on, someone you could trust. Had to keep from thinking thoughts like, "_When in Rome, do as the Romans do..._"

...because once you embraced thoughts like that, you never went back.

So _that_ was why Tess hadn't fired her yet. It made all the sense in the world, now.

And then Cherice ruined it all by clearing her throat. All the respect that Miss Tess had held for the short redhead was sent plummeting--what a disgusting habit!--and she listened to her babble on with frayed nerves and fury bubbling up into her veins, her fingernails clacking against the surface of her wooden desk every so often with impatience. Cherice could never be a proper lady. "It was the... ...other model. We don't know how he managed to gain access to it, but we think he may've obtained information about the newest patient in our database from there." A pause as she inhaled, as if preparing to dive into icy cold waters. "I... I know we've all been instructed to keep the Warden from interacting with the other patients at all costs, so I thought I'd warn you." Another one of those irksome pauses, and she spoke again, slight panic colouring her otherwise timorous tone. "Please, don't think we've been anything less than diligent; it's just hard to keep track of him, that's all. It's no one's fault, really."

Her supervisor knew what that meant: _Don't blame Dr. Gilligan._

If she thought she could get away with it, she _would_ have blamed Dr. Gilligan. He drank far too much coffee than was good for him, he flirted with Cherice and distracted her and kept her from performing the necessary tasks, and, as if that wasn't enough, he was too nervous. Fidgety, nervous men normally had no place in a hospital like her own, around criminals who could tell what Jared Gilligan was like just by knowing what he ate for breakfast. Criminals took men like him and twisted and warped them in their own image, influenced them and played with their minds like toys in a sandbox. But he knew more about her hell-raising patient than even she did.

Anyway, she had more important things to worry about, right now. "I'm not surprised he managed to hack into that old thing," she said dryly, ignoring the other woman's plea for lenience entirely and continuing on her own train of thought. "He does seem to be fond of it, doesn't he? I've heard he's nicknamed it 'Jailbot.' It's almost sad." She almost chuckled as she thought of the blocky, outdated computer, and then remembered that she wasn't the type of person to chuckle at anything.

Cherice chuckled nervously along with her. It was almost pathetic, the terror she inspired within that girl. It wasn't like she could breathe fire.

"But I digress--back to business!" Miss Tess barked, hunching over the desk, closer to the intercom, and she could almost hear the receptionist snap to attention. "Find out where our clever patient is hiding, track him down and send Dr. Gilligan in to occupy him. If things get too..." she tried to choose her words as carefully as possible, "...messy, let Nurse Liddell intervene. Above all, make sure we get to the newcomer before he does."

"Yes, ma'am."

"We don't want a repeat of what happened last time."

"No, ma'am."

"Good, very good," she murmured almost without thinking as she slipped her white jacket on and prepared to walk right out the door of the office, out into the chaos he'd already created to aggravate her, "I'll be there shortly. ...Oh, and Cherice?"

"Ma'am?"

"I want you to quit referring to our resident troublemaker as 'the Warden.' We don't encourage patients' delusions. You know how warped their minds are." She took one last look around her office, making sure she wasn't forgetting to address anything, and marveled at how orderly it was, how sensible it was. Everything was in its right place. Everything made sense.

"But Miss," she heard Cherice say with a bit of hesitation in her voice, "if we don't call him that, then what do we call him?"

"Not my concern."

With that said and done, Miss Tess took one last breath of her sensible, contained air, opened the door to her office...

...and stepped outside, immersing herself in her secondary, catastrophic world.

Her Rome.

***

**Author's Note~!!:** ...well, that's it for this chapter. I hope you enjoyed it~! If not, feel free to say so, anyway. ;D Any attention at all is appreciated and encouraged.

Also, Honey Bunches of Oats with cinnamon clusters are surprisingly addictive.

TTFN~!


	2. Chapter 2

**Author's Note~~!!: **…yes, folks, I'm BACK!! ;D I'm sorry it took so long—I have no excuse. I'm just terrible at updating, and my muse is very fleeting and fickle sometimes~! I hope you will forgive me and enjoy this chapter. :'3 I have a headache, so let's just get this show on the road!

***

On the whole, there was nothing really interesting about the most recent patient admitted to Ultima. He hadn't ever really had a name of his own, and if he had, he'd forgotten it by now; he'd mostly been in and out of prisons for most of his existence. Before prisons there were juvenile delinquent facilities, and before those there were endless child psychologists. Home was marked by the sight of bars or locks, countless restraints, sometimes medication. He barely remembered his mother, and didn't remember his father at all, and always remembered voices. He knew how to write, but he didn't know how to write properly, and the only books or pamphlets he really enjoyed were Playboy magazines. He didn't like to talk much, since the voices did the talking for him.

These were the facts, and to the average human being they might have sounded strange and foreign, but to the typical criminal justice major they were just a track on the same old broken record. It was very rare indeed that you'd find a criminal who's got no reason to be one, no shady past to his name. Even the nickname "Jackknife" didn't earn him a special spot in the system; after all, many criminals had nicknames like that, titles they clung to when they found they had no others. Most people would take a look at his tattoos and crooked smiles and wave him away.

But there was something that made him different. Jackknife really liked rabbits.

He liked the feel of their soft fur against his skin; he liked the look of their floppy ears and their cotton tails. He liked the way they squirmed in his arms; he liked the way they squirmed in his pants. He liked the feel of desperate paws clawing at the air for salvation as he stuck 'em where the sun didn't shine. All things fuzzy and cuddly, really, were very good companions, but something about those bunnies, the way they put the Energizer Bunny to shame when he had his way with 'em, something about that was extra nice. The psychologists called it a "fixation," the good people of the world called it "perverse," the voices called it a "hunger." It was a compulsion, a need, a sin.

So how could anyone blame him for waltzing into that pet store and doing with them what he liked to do best? He hadn't even noticed the sweet auburn-haired girl at the counter using the phone. One minute he was walking around feeling as happy as a clam with the thing clawing for its life down there, the chattering in his head silenced for the day, the next minute he was going through the same song and dance he'd been through ever since he was old enough to learn the lyrics and the choreography. This time, though, it was slightly different—they deemed him "incompetent to stand trial." They said that clearly his actions were a result of a psychotic break, that he couldn't control his impulses and urges, that his mind was so fragile he couldn't possibly assist in his own defense.

They might've just been calling him "stupid." He didn't really know.

What he did know, somewhere in the murky haze of his mind, was that being stupid wasn't a crime that warranted this. Being sent to this place. It wasn't even a drab place, not grey and filled to the brim with sweat and racial slurs like the places he was accustomed to. No, it was all bright lights and white that made the eyes water. It almost reminded him of childhood, the bits of childhood that he could remember, anyway. And he didn't like that, didn't like feeling small. Feeling stupid was okay, even to be expected, but feeling small was terrible. He tried to get used to the sound of his soul shriveling up and enjoy making the ladies he could find in this strange place turn five different shades of red.

By noon, he found, he was getting into a sort of rhythm. He'd had a relatively full breakfast, complete with the daily dose of pills (taste wasn't great, but who really cared), no one had tried to stab him to death just yet, and now he was layin' around on a bed that was all his own, relaxed and ready to take a nap. He could get used to this. Sure, he'd seen others with wild eyes, he'd heard some tall tales already, and the voices were gnawing in the back of his mind, telling him to get out while he still could. But it wasn't too bad here, from what he could tell. He was bound to escape eventually, but at least he could scarf free food down until then, loosen up a little.

He was just about to doze off when a rapping at the door interrupted him.

It couldn't have been the bulky redheaded woman who'd visited him earlier; her knocks were firm, more like a pounding. This was almost a polite, brief sort of knocking, and a voice followed it. "Hello, Mister Jackknife! Don't be shy—I know you're in there!" Lilting, high-pitched, strange. Definitely not the woman who'd visited him earlier. Jackknife just blinked at the door, clinging at bed sheets, wondering whether he should open the door himself or not. The way he saw it, it didn't matter--they'd find their way in no matter what he did. Some part of his brain told him that a key was turning in the lock, but the rest of his brain was too fried to try to figure out what this meant. He watched as light spilled into the room, light from the halogen bulbs on the outside.

_Please be a sexy lady,_ some part of him was pleading, though the other part of him knew the voice he'd heard was male.

Not even a moment later and he had a cup full of pills in his hand. He blinked down at it almost warily, looking puzzled—medication, again?—before downing them all in one gulp, without any water. They didn't look like the pills he'd taken earlier; his were yellow, these were blue, but that hadn't really registered until after he started feeling a little woozy. He was pretty sure his pills weren't supposed to make him feel like he was burning alive, either, and he was positive they weren't supposed to make him feel like he couldn't move an inch.

Jackknife tried to cast a panicked glance up at the person who had practically thrown the cup at him, but everything was beginning to blur. He wasn't sure if it was the exhaustion or the terrible burning, but he could feel tears streaming down his cheeks, and the whole room seemed to be spinning, the white walls, the linoleum floor and the ceiling all blurring together to form one confusing mess. It was hard to make out what the figure standing above him looked like exactly, but he looked official. He was dressed like the doctors before him had been, and he might've been waving, but Jackknife couldn't be sure. The pain, the pain, he wanted to _scream, _he could take this dick down, he _had_ to!!

But then he got a glimpse into those eyes. Those weren't doctor's eyes. They were far away, distant and dreaming, concocting nightmares. Those were eyes that had seen things that made Jackknife want to piss in his pants. They smiled at him, smiled at him in the way that a crocodile smiles, in a way that made him want to throw up (or maybe that was the medicine). It was a hungry stare, and it gave him a thought, a new one, one that had never entered his mind before.

_This guy's fucking __**crazy.**_

Seemed like a funny thing to think of, in a place that was supposedly crawling with people who were "mentally ill" or stupid. But he'd seen a lot of weirdoes in his day, and say what you want about the guy who'd killed a family of five in their own house, the man who'd robbed a bank, the guy who'd had his way with little children. At least all of them were there. He could tell that when they went about their day, they were at least somewhat aware of the prison walls surrounding them. They knew who they were, they knew what they had done, and they were all right there, right then, to a degree that Jackknife could at least understand. These eyes weren't here, there, or anywhere else, and if they were, "here, there or anywhere else" were probably places he didn't want to visit anytime soon.

He was being fitted into some sort of confining jacket, now, and all he could do was thrash about as not only one sick someone but several someones attempted to grab a hold of him and rip him from his bed. He listened as the voice instructed the other someones to be quick, very quick, before anyone caught onto their operation. It was becoming more difficult to keep his eyes open than it had ever been, and though everything in his body was protesting, his eyelids were drooping. The voices in his head were screaming, now: _Jackknife, Jackknife, he's going to __**KILL**__ you, Jackknife; he's going to __**KILL**__ you. __**RUN.**_

For once, he didn't feel the need to silence them, and he was pretty sure he couldn't give them what they wanted.

It was hard to say whether it was the medicine or pure fear that caused him to pass out, but nothing but blackness greeted him after that.

***

His nameplate declared him to be "Dr. Warren, MD." It was shiny and white and the title was printed in neat black letters all in a row. Whenever he got into certain moods, he would polish it using his white jacket, making sure it was pristine and perfect, smiling at it with a pride that almost didn't belong to him. Whenever he got into other moods, blacker moods, gloomier moods, he would glower at everyone who dared to stare, torn between ripping the thing off of his jacket and throwing it to the ground and polishing it 'til the letters faded away. But that was what the nameplate said he was, regardless of what he would have liked to do with it. A few pills a day keep the crazies at bay!

His eyes declared him to be something else entirely. They were dark brown eyes, wide and filled with mania and hunger. Dark bags underneath them indicated chronic sleep-deprivation. On good days, his gaze was friendly, if not overly so, and you could see some sort of warped wonder behind his eyes. On trying days, his gaze was smoldering, and if you strained yourself you could almost see a demon pulling the strings behind his stare, licking its lips and looking hungry as it grinned from ear to ear. Either way, the look in his eyes was so bright it almost hurt just to look at him, so sunny it was almost sickening. The more observant worker bees could single him out based on the look of his thirsty eyes alone, but it was surprising how many of them merely glanced to the shiny nameplate and allowed him to continue on his way...

Still, though he suspected the majority of people in this place were just humoring him and watching for twitches and glitches in a doctor's clothing, he knew they wouldn't let him walk through the walls of this place without a title of his own. That was one of the nifty perks that came with having a following of his own and enlightening the masses--he had people, people who could assist him in conjuring up neat titles like "Dr. Warren" and putting them to good use. The good Doctor knew a thing or two about titles like that, which was always useful whenever he had to don outrageous medical outfits, medication was always easy to obtain and the inmates—ahem, _other patients_—were always more than happy to assist him in transferring new prisoners from place to place. Of course, it wasn't the ideal arrangement at all, and he would have much preferred to bring about justice in the usual manner, but you make due with what you have, don't you? He could get by for now.

Besides, the doctor's jacket didn't look half bad on him.

And so here he was, walking merrily along with the nameplate pinned to him and examining his reflection on the clean, white linoleum floor. Several inmates (patients, he had to use their lingo now, get into character!) trailed along behind him, albeit a bit scattered among the dizzying, dastardly throng of workers, supporting the unconscious Jackknife's weight. He was using the one named Gary, tattoo of a bird on his arm and all, as a lookout, and right about now he was feeling pretty sly, unbearably sharp and undoubtedly _super._ Halogen bulbs tried in vain to illuminate his intentions, and he let his gap-toothed grin take up very much of his face as he peered up at them and gave a little wave toward the ceiling for spite. Winking didn't hurt, either. There might have been cameras installed up there, after all, and he wanted the clever "head psychiatrist" to see this more than anything. He wanted her to know that this had been almost _too_ easy. He wanted to gloat.

_You think you can pull the wool over my eyes, huh? Well, wait until you see __**this.**_

Imagine his dismay when he looked back down and saw the outline of a familiar figure up ahead! The man was unquestionably shorter than him, his cranium was unquestionably large, and he was definitely sweating bullets, and yet the sight of him nearly made the confident doctor-in-disguise freeze on the spot. "Jared," he murmured, irritation gracing his features as he tried to remind his legs and feet to keep moving, "damnit." Under normal circumstances the sight of Jared wouldn't have made him bat an eyelash, and even under these circumstances all he normally wanted to do was rip Jared's irksome mustache right off of his face or work him like putty in his hands, but... ...ugh, not now. He didn't have time for that right now.

Maybe if they just moved past him as inconspicuously as possible—

"Warden?" the pathetic man gasped, very nearly walking past them all. He did a double-take once he noticed the unconscious newcomer, almost dropping his hot cup of coffee to the floor, hands already trembling. "W-What are you doing in those clothes? And is that the new p—"

One gigantic twitch pulsated throughout the whole of "Dr. Warren's" body, and then another, ripple after ripple of spasms and pure, unadulterated rage. He wanted nothing more than to pop the infuriating man's head off of his shoulders, twist and turn and pop until he put a stop to that cracking, obnoxious voice. It was too damn loud, that was the problem, and too damn easy to get Jared all fired up to boot. He was constantly driving himself crazier than the Warden himself was supposed to be just by existing, and right now he was making a scene. It came to the pseudo-psychiatrist's attention that he was gripping at the sides of Jared's overly large melon, willing himself to twist and turn it and put a stop to this madness. His own hands were shaking, now, at the thought of another failed attempt to take what was rightfully his.

He couldn't stand to fail again.

"I'm sorry," he began as sweetly as he could, acidic candied words coating his tone as he looked the sweaty man right in the eyes, "do I know you?"

His tone was enough to stop the frantic "psychologist" dead in his tracks, and he smiled as Jared just stared into his eyes like a deer in the headlights, captivated by his gaze. It was true that they were running out of time, but at least he could milk this opportunity for all it was worth in this small timeframe. The thought lifted his spirits considerably. He allowed one of his fingers to start tracing invisible circles on Jared's skin, slowly, making sure that his victim felt every trace, making sure that he understood just how close the Warden was to clawing at his skin.

"Wish I could stay and chat," he continued on, twirling a bit of Jared's thick brown mustache 'round his pasty white finger, almost tugging at it, "but duty calls! No rest for the wicked, _you_ understand!"

Jared could only nod somewhat dumbly in response, eyes wide and body shaking like a maraca. His opponent thought he heard him gulp.

He chuckled lightly, almost wildly and uncontrollably for such relatively soft giggles, as he extended a finger outwards and prodded Jared on the nose. There was something wild in the Warden's eyes now, an outbreak of embers, simmering sadism that his prey realized hadn't been lying dormant, but rather had been so dominant and glaring and obvious that he had been a fool not to recognize it. "Wow, Jared, you're a real _idiot _sometimes_,_" the Warden stated almost childishly, no doubt echoing Jared's own thoughts. And then, with an eagerness in his voice that rivaled even the most hyperactive young boy's: "…_now!!_"

He relished in the screams of pain and surprise that followed as he shoved Jared backwards and watched him fall sprawling to the floor with the cup of coffee not far behind. Always had to fit just a _smidge _of sadism into his already terribly busy schedule, to keep that bounce in his step and that glint in his eye! Something about the screams of a man in pain just made him feel as if he could take on the entire world.

Not that he ever thought he couldn't, regardless.

By the time the group had reached what the Warden called his "sanctuary," his giggles hadn't subsided as everyone had been expecting, but instead grew louder and more childlike as time wore on. Despite his desire for Jared to keep quiet and not to make a scene, he seemed rather keen on making one. Tears were welling up in his eyes as he howled, and he tried to wipe them away as he fiddled with the doorknob a little and ushered everyone in, herding them like sheep and keeping a careful eye on his prize.

"Hurry up, hurry _up,_ we don't have all day!"

Once everyone had settled in, he surveyed the room with something almost resembling relief. Everything was just as he'd left it, from the mattress he'd laid out on the floor to the various purple sticky notes to self that were littering the place to Jailbot sitting atop the mahogany desk in the corner. He'd been hiding here for a little while, biding his time.

After a moment of taking it all in, he almost looked to the tired computer with pity, shaking his head. If there was one thing he absolutely could not stand to think about, it was what the "head psychiatrist" had done with his efficient, super machine. How dare she take his robot and do something like _this!_

But everything would be restored, soon. He was _sure_ of it.

"I'm going to the trouble to help you all wise up to what's really going on," he remarked more to the air or himself than anyone else in the room as he took his seat at the desk, "and they call me a _criminal._ Oh, maybe some of you are, but I'm just the opposite! Isn't it obvious?" The Warden was even farther away now than he had been even a half hour ago, off in other worlds and other facilities, calling the shots and conjuring up spectrums, a hero, not a rebel but an independent thinker who kept the rebels at bay.

This happened very frequently.

There was an awkward silence as the others considered this, exchanging glances that said more than their frayed and frazzled nerves would allow them to say. It was clear that though most of them enjoyed his stories and hearing his tall tales, watching him weave his own spider's web, not all of them knew what to believe. There were some blind believers in the bunch, bunches of former inmates who had accepted their fate and would follow him to the ends of the Earth and back, and there were the skeptics, who were only tagging along for some excitement in this godforsaken place. Most of them were on the fence, going through the motions because they didn't know what else to do.

You never really messed with a person like the Warden, anyway. You could _dream_ about it, you could fantasize about knocking even more of those teeth out of his mouth or assuming his position as lead of the pack, but most people weren't actually stupid enough to actually act on those urges. No one really wanted to think about what had happened to the last unfortunate fellow who had dared to ask some very impolite questions. That was definitely something best left to the imagination, and _only_ the imagination.

"Well? Isn't anyone going to set him down?" the Warden raised an eyebrow toward the newest member of their group, looking to all of them with questioning eyes. "Do I have to do this all by myself?"

The answer came to him quickly, in the form of quite a few pairs of arms and hands setting Jackknife's limp body down on the mattress and helping to undo the straitjacket around the poor fellow, and he beamed with satisfaction. Their newest prisoner was quite the sight to see; all those tattoos, his matted hair, his red and swollen eyes. They'd fitted him with a clean hospital gown by now, he noted with apparent disgust, but he remembered the man's original clothes had been dirty and wrinkled. Nothing too impressive.

"Now… …to wait."

Waiting was the most difficult part of this whole process. First the inmates got to feeling very jittery and volatile, hearing things or imagining things in all their stress. Whispers would start to float around the room, and they would all look down upon their newest comrade, wondering if the Warden had actually killed them with medicine. Then, the Warden would start to get restless, drumming his fingers on the desk and scribbling notes to himself that often made no sense at all on sticky note after sticky note, sticking them in seemingly random spots using trembling hands.

As usual, there were several false alarms, and one particularly paranoid man somehow managed to convince a few members of the group that he had heard "Miss Tess" outside, and they all descended into a frantic frenzy for a few brief but very significant minutes.

There was an awful lot of blood to be had, yes.

But, just as usual, things had a way of working themselves out. After what seemed like an eternity, the man's red and swollen eyes cracked open, and he squinted and let out a series of unintelligible grunts, looking both befuddled and absolutely petrified as he stared up at the sea of faces up above him. Most of them looked just as puzzled to see him as he looked to see them.

But this was the Warden's time to shine, now, and most of them knew it. The sea of faces parted as he made his way from the desk over to the mattress, grinning in that ravenous way of his and looking so excited it almost made one's insides itch. A full minute was spent just staring at the man from his position up above, and then came the very introduction he'd rehearsed over and over again.

"Oh, good, you're awake! Hello again, Mister Jackknife! You were an elusive one—so glad Jailbot was able to bring you to me! I'm the Warden. You're not in Superjail just _yet…_"

Drawing it all out for dramatic flourish, he curled his fists into balls. Something undeniably dark about his tone, something sinister and colorful all at once.

"…but you _should_ be."

The demons behind his eyes laughed.

***

**Author's Note~!!:** …well, that's it for this chapter. ;D Don't worry, I'll try to update more frequently. Remember, any attention at all is encouraged!!

Stay ~~super~~!!


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